'John Tognolini has been a rare voice and witness for justice in Australia, chronicling the struggles of Indigenous Australians and veterans and the deceptions of power from behind the facades of a society that prefers not to know. I salute him.'
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Sunday, June 03, 2007

Dave Noonan, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union’s construction division national secretary, has slammed the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) for “intimidating and bullying” workers.

“The ABCC is engaged in systematic intimidation and bullying of individual workers in the construction industry”, he said on May 22. “This government body has the power to fine workers for taking action to defend their wages and conditions and to jail workers who take part in union meetings and refuse to cooperate with secret government interrogations.”

Noonan told Green Left Weekly that the ABCC’s approach is to litigate first and ask questions later. “They’re a highly politically-driven organisation.” He said that the ABCC is prosecuting the union and five workers who were employed on a mine site in western NSW, a John Holland project, for alleged industrial action after the workers had complained in 2005 about maggots in their food.

Noonan said that there had been a number of ABCC-initiated prosecutions of the union, including one in the Wollongong area which resulted in a court order that the union take out an advertisement advising people that they don’t have to be union members to work in the construction industry. The CFMEU is appealing the order.

The ABCC is continuing litigation against the 107 West Australian construction workers, who were employed on the Leighton Kumagai Perth to Mandurah rail link project, for taking strike action in February 2006 to protect job safety and to protest the sacking of their health and safety (OH&S) representative. The next hearing is due in October, and the ACTU has established a fund to provide the workers with legal support. If the ABCC prosecution is successful, each of the workers could be fined up to $28,000.

In another ABCC attack a CFMEU shop steward, Charlie Corbett, has been charged with coercion and unlawful industrial action and is facing $44,000 in fines for insisting that Hooker Cockram honour a 2004 agreement with the union to take on a third- or fourth-year apprentice at the start of the job and another, preferably Indigenous apprentice, halfway through. The company reneged on the agreement in 2005.

CFMEU organiser John Parker is also facing $66,000 in fines in the Federal Court over this dispute, which was settled two years ago, for allegedly imposing an overtime ban at the site to force the company to honour the agreement. If he is convicted, Corbett faces fines of up to $44,000, while the CFMEU is facing a fine of $20,000.

The ABCC has also bought a court case against crane driver Brodene Wardley over a September 2005 health and safety dispute at the construction site of a Mineral Sands processing plant in western Victoria.

Wardley, a single mother with three children, who was named WorkSafe Victoria’s 2006 health and safety representative of the year, was one of the 200 workers who voted to take strike action after a minibus carrying workers to the site was involved in a near miss with a freight train close to the site’s main gate. Noonan said that the ABCC had subjected Wardley to “secret star chamber interviews” with the threat of imprisonment if she didn’t comply.

The ABCC operates in complete secrecy. When a worker is summoned to questioning by the ABCC, he or she is allowed a lawyer, but the worker nor the lawyer is allowed to reveal the content of the interrogation with anyone, under threat of imprisonment.

“The ABCC encourages employers to try to keep the union out at all costs”, said Noonan. “Where employers have a good relationship with the union and access has been properly negotiated, the ABCC will go to that site and threaten the employer with loss of commonwealth work if they don’t exclude the union.

“The impact on safety is predictable: we have seen a decline. Construction workers are now confronted with a situation where they have a reverse onus of proof if they take action over unsafe conditions. Workers have to prove that they had a reasonable expectation that the job was unsafe or face prosecution in an industry that kills on average a worker a week. The consequences of that are predictably dire.”

“The ABCC is funded $32 million a year — rising to $34 million in a couple of years’ time if the Liberals get back into government. It’s focus is purely to attack union organisation and activity in the construction industry. It hasn’t prosecuted or investigated one employer for underpaying workers, ripping off workers’ entitlements, poor safety practices, tax evasion or any of the other practices that some employers engage in the industry. It focuses entirely on anti-union litigation, agitation on sites and propaganda”, said Noonan.

“It’s clear what the government is up to: with the ABCC, it’s trying to do to construction workers, with lawyers in wigs and gowns, what it tried to do to the waterside workers with dogs and balaclavas.”

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"A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction." Graham Greene

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Journalists and Writers I Like.

"Bread and work and love, the poor man’s trinity, and by all three needs they chain him down." Christina Stead 1902-1983 Seven Poor Men of Sydney

"Every government is run by liars and nothing should be believed." I.F.Stone 1907-89

"I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult." Arthur Miler 1915-2005

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." George Orwell 1903-50

"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understandig the hidden agendas of the message that surrounds it." John Pilger

"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war - for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more." Joesph Heller 1923-99

"Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism." Graham Greene 1904-91

"My experience in the First World War and now the Second World War [his son Barney was killed in the Battle of Singapore] changed my outlook on things. It is hard to believe that there is a God. I feel the Bible is a book written by man but for the purpose of preying on a person’s conscience, and to confuse him. Anyone who taken part in a bayonet charge (and I have) [Gallipoli], and has managed to retain his proper senses, must doubt the truth of the Bible and the powers of God, if one exists. And considering the many hundreds of different religions that there are in this world of ours, and the fact that many religions have caused terrible wars and hatreds throughout the world, and that many religions that have hoarded tremendous wealth and property while people inside and outside religion are starving , it is difficult to remain a believer. No Sir, there is no God, it is only a myth." Albert Facey 1894-1982 A Fortunate Life

"Now take my case. I’m twenty-nine and have two brothers—one in the Liberal Party and one serving six years for rape and arson. My sister Peg is on the streets and Dad lives off her earnings. Mum is pregnant by the boarder and because of this Dad won’t marry her. Last night I got engaged to an ex-prostitute and I wish to be fair to her: should I tell her about my brother in the Liberal Party." David Ireland 1927- The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

"Prime Minster Howard I’ve heard You met George Bush and the Pope too, I understand, Oh I liked the Pope much better, I only had to kiss his hand." L’Amour Denis Kevans 1939-2005

"The first law of journalism-to confirm existing prejudice rather than contradict it." Alexander Cockburn

"The Labour Party [ALP], starting with a band of inspired Socialists, degenerated into a vast machine for capturing political power, but did not know how to use the power when attained except for the profit of individuals[...] Such is the history of all Labour organisations in Australia, and not because they are Australian , but because they are Labour..." Victor Gordon Childe 1892-1957, How Labour Governs

"The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work." Neal Ascherson, 1932- Games with the Shadows, Policing the Marketplace.

"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. " Major General Smedley Butler,1881-1940

"What is the crime of robbing a bank compared with the crime of founding one." Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?" Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

[Battler]" a conscientious person working against many odds to make a living; one whose life is a constant struggle.’ Battlers maybe men or women; black or white. They rarely deal with racism (the negative side of our tradition) because they sympathise with anyone facing adversity or unfair criticism. The term ‘battler’ is a state of mind-a traditional attitude which goes back to the convict era, when the battler was on a flogging to nothing but fiddled around the rules and held his masters in contempt. The battlers are aware that they are being lied to by....politicians; and they suspect that Keating’s warning that Australia could become a banana republic is in fact, happening before their eyes." Frank Hardy 1917-1994. Retreat Australia Fair 1990

I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer. Brendan Behan 1923-64

“I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.” Arundhati Roy